Seems like every developer I know out there has a backlog of games: games they never finished, games they should have started, and gems that have only recently garnered a cult-like status with folks. I’m trying to get through my back-log and give some insight as to whether I should have played it in the first place.
Why I never played Bully
I never got around to playing Bully: it was a PS2 port and when I was gathering games to play on my newly purchased Xbox360, the last thing I wanted to do was play a previous-generation game on the ‘Next’ Generation. When my interest had finally peaked after numerous industry recommendations it was impossible to find in the stores.
Why I wanted to play Bully
Obviously the main reason was because it was a Rockstar game. While I’ve said before how I’m not a fan of GTA III, Vice City or San Andreas, the last 2 outings from Rockstar have been quite good. On top of that it’s from the usually quiet studios of Rockstar Vancouver and Toronto (though my understanding is that Toronto just worked on the port and had nothing to do with the design of the game). The idea of Grand Theft Auto, but in high school, has a certain appeal. And if you look at the timeline of Rockstar games, this is one of the games that comes in between the previous generation outings of GTAIII and Red Dead Redemption. This game could very well be a stepping point.
And my first impressions were…
Well…there’s one thing you can say about games that have come out in the last 3 years, and that’s developers have certainly learned how to successfully allocate textures and polys. But that’s a little unfair because Bully was intended for a previous generation and the port was slated to be simply a console-porting, nothing new. So I swallowed the ratty textures and blaring polygons — but then was slammed with simplistic level design and a poor sense of place. I was pretty sure at this point that I wasn’t going to be able to get through the rest of the game.
Why I finished it
I persevered…and though the design of the game was simplistic I realized that this game was actually filling a hole, a need, that I hadn’t realize existed. Apparently the inner me was dying for some RPG-like action game that didn’t involve guns or swords. I mean Bully is a game that has absolutely ZERO deaths in it. Is that a first in the last 2 generations of games? It could very well be. But once the world opens up and the game gives the player some progression in what they can do, opening up jobs, stores and a variety in places and sidemissions, I really started to feel a rhythm in the game. I didn’t necessarily want to know what was going to happen with the story, as the story is probably the weakest aspect of this game. I desperately wanted to get 100% and get all the easy-t0-get achievements. There’s something to say about actually achieveable Achievements that don’t force you to go online. Most of all I wanted to win.
What I hated
A late-in-the-game Stealth Mission. Nothing screams last generation than having a new level that introduces a new, poorly implemented mechanic like Stealth, or taking away your weapons. I also didn’t like that the game lacked a Saturday or Sunday: sometimes I felt like this game was mimicking the limits of my own personal time in Real Life. And finally the story: the purported antagonist was missing through literally 1/2 of the game!
Bonus Points For
Teaching me some Geography and including a rhythm-based music class.
Why you should play it
I’m not sure you need to. Bully does something that very few games are able to do: remove the need for guns, killing or adult jokes and have an involving and fun game. It provides a cool spin on the GTA formula and some fun aspects of childhood made into devilishly fun game experiences. But this game is hardly a must-buy because time has not treated this game well at all: it falls to the trappings of design implementations that we, as an industry, have learned don’t work and ignores the emotional involvement that so many games achieved.
